Les Anges de l'Enfer
by Soleil la bijoutiere
Summary: Pantin never forgets. It never forgives. Pantin refuses show any form of humanity or change its most destructive traits, and so do its habitants. What did the future have in store for Patron-Minette? Agnès has been raised in darkness. Is there a way out?
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The night in Paris is dangerous. The jackals haunt the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and menacingly walk the streets filled with snow, mud and puddles of dirty water. The prowlers of the barriers can only be seen in the shadow. A blood-curdling scream can be heard in every alley. Men, women, children and monsters roam in those places, and there is no way of telling them apart, sunk as they are in mud and misery.

There are no stars in the sky. It seems that God has forgotten the Parisians. Or, perhaps, even God is repulsed by them.

A girl walks down the sidewalk of the Rue Vignes-Saint-Marcel. She is thin, lanky and sickly, and her lymphatic pallor is evident even in the dark. She walks soundlessly and seems afraid of being discovered. In her arms she carries a jumble of rags, which contains a baby girl who is barely a few weeks old.

She reaches the end of the block and runs.

Quickly and quietly she goes through the narrow streets and every time she hears footsteps, she hides in the shadows. Upon reaching a small square, the girl slows down and finally stops. She is exhausted. She bends and gasps for several minutes, but starts out again with determination. The reason why she runs is more important to her than life itself.

She tightly holds the infant to her chest.

After one o' clock in the morning, she reaches her destination. In the middle of the Boulevard du Temple, there used to be a narrow two-story house, with green shutters of slightly chipped paint and an empty plant pot in one of the frames. Assuredly, this pot would house many flowers in summer. There are no shattered windows or broken roof tiles, or stains on the walls, or lights on. The girl is now facing said house.

Upon reaching the door, she stops. She does not pant, having slowed down her pace a long while ago, but she does shiver. Although a shawl covers her head and shoulders, her skirt barely reaches her knees and sports a hole or two. The moonlight provides some clarity and allows us to see a part of her face: a button nose covered with freckles, sunken cheeks, thick-lidded dark eyes and a bruised, dry mouth. Although she does not look like more than fourteen, there is a deep wrinkle between her eyebrows, on which locks of chestnut hair constantly fall.

She stands on the sidewalk for a long time, thinking about something and rocking the baby in order to keep her from waking up. She looks at her with infinite love and sadness, and before she can realize it, a couple of tears fall on the rags that that cover her. She stifles a sob and seems poised to return to the place she came from, even giving one or two quick steps to the left, but then she re-considers it. She takes a few deep breaths and goes back to the door of the pretty house.

She bends. She embraces the child passionately. She kisses her forehead. She gently places her on the step. She gets up. She wraps the shawl around herself... and disappears into the night.

Around the baby's neck there is a thin strand of rope, which has attached a paper with the following characters clumsily written: "Agnès."


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

In that house lived a young couple of good position. They had been workers and were optimistic enough to dream of someday being bourgeois, but also realistic enough to not pass from dreaming. To be brief, they were a happy middle class couple with a quiet life. They had few sorrows and fewer ambitions, many joys based on simplicity, and one wish, shared with most young couples: to have children.

They were called Monsieur and Madame Prunelle. Since their private story will not be too relevant for our tale, I will refrain from narrating it in detail: he was from Lyon and she was from Saint-Etienne. Both left home during adolescence to seek opportunities in Paris. There, they met, courted each other for a short period, and less than seven months after seeing each other for the first time, they married. Monsieur Prunelle unexpectedly received a big promotion at work, through which he could buy the home of his dreams. His wife quit her job to devote herself to her house and plan their future.

The morning after these events, Madame Prunelle found the baby when she opened the door for the cat to enter. Her maternal instincts soon took over the situation; she lifted her in her arms and carried her into the house. After speaking for several hours, both spouses decided that three things were clear: first, the mother of the child, whoever she was, had left her there on purpose. The reason was not clear, but both sensed that the little one must have come from a destitute family who could not care for her, and had been forced to abandon her in hopes that she could find a good home. Predicaments such as this were common at that time.

Secondly, M. Prunelle assured his wife that, no matter how they tried, they would never find the baby's family.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Because they probably don't want to be found." he answered.

Third, it was their duty as good citizens and Christians to take care of the child. For a long while they analyzed their options, and realized that they were few. They could leave her in an orphanage, but knew if they did, she would have a life as sad as her family must have wanted to save her from. To keep her seemed a very reasonable option for Madame Prunelle.

She appealed to the most excellent causes to support her point of view. They had the means to care for the girl and maintain their current lifestyle, even allowing themselves some luxuries. They would be saving a little girl growing up in the streets, eventually becoming a gamine and (God forbid!) a woman of the town. They had wished for a baby for such a long time... and she was such a pretty little thing, with her little black curls and porcelain skin!

Her husband, who wanted children as much as her, gave in after a short time. He was also surprised that the name of the infant was the same as that of his older sister.

"Agnès," he said, "means pure, chaste and sacred."

"The patron saint of adolescent girls." added his wife, who was more pious than he.

She became Agnès Prunelle. The enjoyed telling all of their acquaintances the story of how she had fallen into their arms by miracle or coincidence, especially Madame Prunelle, whose affection bordered on worship. She bursted with pride over her rosy cheeks, her curls, her peaceful character and, when time began to pass, over her first steps and words. She took Agnès with her everywhere, and she became the sun of her life.  
>Her adopted father's affection was milder and more silent, but he adored her too. It amused him to see her tripping over the carpet and help her to stand up again. Hearing her baby coos and what she had learned during the day was what drove him back home every day.<p>

It was 1829 when they found her, and 1832 when she lost them.  
>The cholera outbreak that had ravaged the slums somehow reached the Boulevard du Temple, and Madame Prunelle had to keep bed, feverish and ejecting green vomit. Her husband spent most of the money he kept in the jar on the mantelpiece, to pay the best doctor he could find. However, there was no solution. The doctor said that his wife was lost, and that he would have to put him and his daughter in quarantine to prevent them from contracting the illness. Despite the man's desperate protests and the three year old girl, who never ceased reaching for her mother, they were sent to separate rooms in a hospital.<p>

Madame Prunelle died shortly afterwards. The doctors found with relief that her daughter Agnès was safe, and with gloominess that the husband had been infected. After writing a short note in which he predisposed where he and his wife would be buried, and a long letter in which he feverishly declared how much he regretted, from the depths of his soul, leaving little Agnès alone in the world, he died.

The doctors failed to tell the child that her "parents" were dead. After declaring her healthy, they let her run away, to focus on attending the wave of patients that arrived to the hospital every hour, and soon forgot about her.

Agnès was not old enough to understand what was happening, and wandered through the streets of Paris looking for her parents.

When night came, she was sitting on the doorstep of an abandoned building. She was hungry, thirsty and sleepy, and her feet hurt. She wanted her mother, and called for her amid sobs.

The night in Paris is dangerous. It can swallow a kitten and regurgitate it turned into a wildcat.

However, Agnès, perhaps protected by some angel, did not suffer any harm.

She was, as we have made clear, sitting on the doorstep of a derelict building. Adjacent to this building was a rectangular establishment of only one floor, with broken roof tiles and grubby windows. From the outside, one could hear suspicious whispers, drunken laughter and punching on wood. Above the door it was written in coal and capital, blurred by rain and time, "Café Laurent".

Straight from the shadows, or so it seemed, another figure emerged. It walked towards the café with elegant and well-measured steps, upright, but with his head down and holding his hat over his eyes. He wore a frock coat that was threadbare but very well made.

For some reason, he did not enter the establishment, but stopped at the door of the abandoned building and lifted his hat slightly. He was very handsome young man, with marble skin, blue eyes and red lips. The left brim of his hat was raised on the left, exposing neat black curls.

He seemed to have a wrong idea of what he would find there, and his mouth was curved in a smile. Upon seeing the little girl, that smile became a grimace of disappointment; he took a rather bettered watch from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time, after what he shook his head.  
>"Too bad." he said to himself.<p>

Agnès, upon hearing his voice, looked up to him with curiousness. The young man didn't realize this and turned on his heel to leave, but before he could take one step, he felt his coat being pulled softly.  
>"M'sieur ..." said Agnès. "Do you know where my Maman is?"<p>

The dandy looked over his shoulder, slightly annoyed. He realized that the little girl, contrary to what he had thought, was fairly well dressed, and his look became one of puzzlement. It was most unusual to find someone in that part of the city, besides himself, who was not dressed in rags.  
>"Can you help me?" the little girl asked.<p>

The young man bit his lip, then rolled his eyes and sighed.  
>"How does your mother look?" he asked, grudgingly.<br>"She's a very pretty lady with green eyes. And brown hair." she answered.  
>"I have not seen her." he replied dryly, and began walking towards the place he came from.<p>

Agnès, however, started to follow him.  
>"Would you help me get home?"<br>"Get out."  
>"M'sieur..."<p>

She had seized his frock coat again. To avoid pulling it, the boy stopped on his tracks. He looked at the child over his shoulder; her short stature, her little red hands, her pleading brown eyes. Following the irritation he felt, a sense of pity began to take shape. With another sigh and the same reluctance, he turned. The little girl let go of his clothes.

"Where do you live?" he asked, hoping for a concrete answer and knowing that he was highly unlikely to receive one.

"In a very big house in a bou ... boule ..." began Agnès, unable to remember a difficult word.  
>"Boulevard?" the gentleman suggested.<br>"Yes! Maman said it's called the "Boulevard du Temple '. It has many trees." she answered.

The young man winced.  
>"What's your name?"<br>"Agnès Prunelle."

A shocked silence followed this statement, as tense as if air itself had been punched in the gut. The gentleman had stayed rigid, or so it seemed. His mouth hung open. He knelt on the cobblestones until his face was level with hers.  
>"What did you say?"<br>"My name is Agnès Prunelle." she repeated.

The young dandy took the little one's chin with a gloved hand and examined her face. Button nose, heavy eyelids, slightly oblique dark eyes. Agnès' black curls and mouth uncannily resembled his.

"Then you live in the Boulevard du Temple, and your parents are Monsieur and Madame Prunelle, right?" he asked.  
>"Yes."<p>

He lowered the hand that held her chin and took it to his own, with the air of someone who is putting a puzzle's pieces together.  
>"How old are you?"<br>"Three."

He stared at her for one more moment. Then he rose and held out a hand, which the girl took.  
>"All right. I'll help you." he said, and the two set off in the direction of the Boulevard du Temple.<p> 


End file.
